Machine not focusing correctly or warning me of not in focus

[whickmant]

I am doing a project Ive done before, I couldn’t remember if I used the crumb tray or not. I figured if I hit auto focus and it doesn’t shoot out the error, then it should be in focus. Nope. Ruined an expensive board.
So then I tried removing the crumb tray, same problem. Didn’t warn me that the item is not in the focus range, and the engrave is clearly out of focus (fat). Below is the picture of how it looks. The next photo is a photo of when it worked correctly

[rvogt]

Have you recently cleaned your machine and put the lens in upside down?

[beerfaced]

Posted by @kittski a few years ago. Might help you?

[whickmant]

no sir, in fact I forgot to write that I just cleaned it again to make sure, restarted the machine, no dice

[whickmant]

Yea I know about manually doing this. But GF always tells me if the focus is incorrect. It isn’t doing that anymore

[beerfaced]

So to correct the problem just make sure you have the surface of the board within .5 inches of the laser head and then use ‘set focus’.

[dan84]

The best way to troubleshoot this may be to record the project name, exact date and time of a print that was out of focus and email support@glowforge.com with those details along with the photo of the out-of-focus engrave. That should be enough info to get to just the right part of your machine logs and see what the result of the autofocus was and whether it makes sense for the output you saw.

[jhtimms]

My machine does the same thing. It can’t “set focus”, but auto focus works and it doesn’t line up with the screen. I have emailed support saying that even though auto focus appears to be working with no error messages, they said it actually isn’t working, according to their logs. They want me to buy a new carriage plate for $150. I asked them whether I can return it if it doesn’t fix the problem and they won’t commit to taking a return. They only say I can use the $150 toward a more expensive part. I’m out of warranty, but my machine only has 5 total hours of use. So frustrating that I can’t get to a tech that really knows the machine.